


Silence

by going_slightly_mads (Sanashiya)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (sort of), Concealed Identity, Future, M/M, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Road Trip, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 17:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13506522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanashiya/pseuds/going_slightly_mads
Summary: 2052. Humankind is almost entirely extinct, and Steve, a 134 year-old man stuck in the body of a guy still in his thirties, is roaming the deserted country, looking for survivors. Captain America no longer exists. It's just Steve Rogers, his old pickup truck, the road ahead, and the few people he runs into from time to time. One day, during his mission, he meets Silence, a solitary man with a metal arm, who looks painfully (and impossibly) familiar. One thing becomes clear very quickly: Steve doesn't know anything about Silence, but he doesn't want to leave him.





	Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!
> 
> This is an English translation of a text that I wrote for Collectif Noname's sci-fi challenge of October 2017. Sci-fi is vast, so I turned it into a post-apo setting. My inspirations: Logan (2017), for the road-trip (and Charles), Nonymos' [Into That Good Night](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3121055/chapters/6763406) for the atmosphere, The Stand (Stephen King) for the general post-apocalyptical idea, and Maïa Mazaurette's "Rien ne nous survivra" (Nothing will survive us), an awesome book I shamelessly took a name from, thanks Maïa, God bless you. 
> 
> This fic was not betaed and English is my second language. I have set foot in the US exactly once in my life, more than ten years ago, for about two days. Please excuse any errors or inconsistencies! I did my best. I know my punctuation might be weird. Sorry for that! Also, feel free to point out mistakes.
> 
> Hope you'll like it. :)

 

 

 

Steve like traveling. Have to want to, though; the sheer luck of finding a gas pump still working and not emptied to the last drop notwithstanding, most roads, especially in big cities, are impracticable because of all the vehicles abandoned on it. This is the reason why Steve generally rides his bike, to which he attached a solar panel to avoid the problem of fuel shortage.

The bike is enough, when he's alone. But not when he's on his Mission.

Steve has been managing the Center for more than a decade, and although everybody tells him he's a true leader, he has to get away, sometimes. Funny how a small city, gathering the last remnants of humanity, can sometimes feel overcrowded.

His grey Ford Raptor pickup is waiting, parked on the street. It's an ancient car, from 2015 (dear God, Steve was barely defrosted, in 2015, that's saying something), but it still works just fine. Katie, his closest neighbor from two blocks over, is taking good care of it. (At twenty-three, she knows more about cars that Steve, despite the fact that she was only ten when they stopped producing them.)

When he's not using it, Steve leaves it in the garage, to preserve it, but when he goes on his Mission, he takes it out the day before so it can collect solar energy before he leaves. (Katie is the one who installed the panel on the hood, a year ago, so he didn't have to worry about running out of gas in the middle of nowhere.)

He throws on the backseat the duffel bag that contains his clothes, he stashes water bottles in the back of the pickup, he opens the windows and puts on his sunglasses. The sky is violently blue. Birds are singing, hidden in the vegetation overgrowing buildings and coiling around old power lines. It's October, but the weather is still warm. A gentle breeze blows in the streets, raising dust and dead leaves. A calm and peaceful day, which could almost make you forget that humanity has almost entirely disappeared.

Steve should have got used to it by now, after thirteen years, but every time he leaves his place and realizes he's the only one living in his building, every time he walks down the street and looks at the rusty and crumbling cars they have yet to dispose of, every time he sees the empty avenues stretching for miles, the silent shops, the broken windows, the stray cats and dogs, and coyotes lurking with a hungry look in their eyes, the shock takes his breath away. Around two thousands survivors, in a city where fifteen millions used to live. It's not quite the same.

Steve turns on the engine of the Raptor and it roars, happy to be of service again.

"We're going for a ride, Rapty", Steve whispers.

Going on his Mission. The one and only, for thirteen years. Not continuous, but unending: finding survivors. Steve travels the entire country, state after state, alone behind the wheel, his old car radio crackling and sputtering jazz songs from his childhood, and he looks for isolated souls, and tries to convince them to come to the Center and join their community. Sometimes, he finds no one. Sometimes, even when he does, some say no. They're used to solitude and have no intention to go back to life in society. Most say yes, because they crave human contact. Even when Steve insists on the importance of the rules the community has set, even when he says they have to abide by them and contribute as much as they can, it doesn't stop them. Mankind is meant to live together, of that much Steve is sure.

When he's away, Lili takes command of the Center. Steve doesn't worry. She can read minds and manipulate emotions as she pleases. It's almost exclusively thanks to her they're living in peace. Since her arrival, Steve is free to leave on his Missions without feeling guilty.

Last time, he went South; Virginia, Carolina, Georgia. He brought three people back with him. Before that, he went North, towards Massachusetts, Vermont, then Montreal. Found a group of ten in a small village: they followed him aboard a bus they retrieved on the road. This time, he decides he'll go Southwest. He never went past Missouri. He'd like to see what he can find in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona even. It makes for a long trip, especially since the solar powered engine of the Raptor barely exceeds 50mph, but Steve promised himself he'd go.

His ultimate goal is California, but that would take about ten to fifteen days of travel, all of it entirely alone, and doesn't know if he'll be able to make it. It doesn't matter. Time is not a problem for him. He's already 134, if you're counting the years he spent under the ice, and still an honorable total of 67 years old when you don't, and yet he still looks like a guy in his thirties. The serum was probably the key, he supposes, to surviving three successive super-flu pandemics. Which explains why the majority of survivors living in the Center have abilities, too. Most are mutants; some, like Steve, are forgotten superheroes whose identity, like Steve's, was entirely forgotten by the rest of humanity. And in that midst, there's the occasional regular human being, protected by a foolproof immune system.

Steve is rather proud of the small community he was able to create, in only thirteen years: almost two thousands individuals, helping each other, offering their knowledge in various fields of work, so as to try to rebuild a civilization the way it was before the Fall. There's electricity, in town, there's drinkable water in reservoirs, there's a hospital, a market, a school. There are fields, outside the city, that they cultivate to replenish their food supplies. There's everything one needs, and Steve built that.

It's the reason he's always the one leaving for Missions – he's the passionate one, the one people listen to, the one they want to follow. In Kentucky, he meets a man who points his empty rifle at him. Steve knows for a fact it's empty, because bullets disappeared even quicker than food back then, but he still raises his hands as a sign of peace. After ten minutes, the man finally lowers his useless gun. After thirty minutes, Steve can tell he looks interested in this "Center". After one hour, he's packing his stuff.

"Your Center, that's New York, right?" he says, loading his meager possessions in the back of his own pickup truck.

"The old Brooklyn", Steve nods.

"Alright. I'm going, then. Thanks, man."

That's how it goes, most of the time. People find their way to the Center on their own, and Steve continues on his solitary journey.

In Oklahoma, he finds three girls giving off a distinct hippie vibe, who immediately start flirting with him. He politely declines, but he tells them about the Center until they finally exchange intrigued looks.

"We could go", one of the girls says.

An other asks, "What about our horses? We can't leave them here."

"They're coming with us, of course", the third one replies. "It'll be good to see other people."

Since Steve avoids traveling by night (safety reasons aside, the solar panel dies down way too quickly), he sleeps in their yurt. The next morning, the girls tell him they'll go to the Center, but at their own pace, riding their horses. Steve smiles and nods, and as a thank-you gift, they give him a bottle full of alcohol they brewed themselves. It's so strong Steve himself feels dizzy for a good five minutes. It's nice.

Then, he hits the road again. Sometimes, he stops and listens to the silence. Before the Fall, he'd never heard anything like it, and it still takes some getting used to, sometimes. No car sounds, no sign of human life, only the wind blowing through the tall grass, and animals lurking in the vegetation, which is getting drier and dried the more he goes West.

In Texas, although it's already October, the air is still hot. The earth is red, scarcely strewn with tufts of dry grass. The sky is wide and infinite. There, he only meets a twenty-something guy,  who's happy where he is and doesn't want to hear about the Center. That's fine with Steve. He doesn't want to force, only to suggest. He continues on.

Sometimes, loneliness weighs on him. It's been a week since he left Brooklyn, and despite the breathtaking landscapes, despite the glorious feeling of freedom, it's perhaps the part of the Mission he likes the least, having no one to talk to but himself. It's always in these moments his brain starts buzzing and he ends up thinking about the past. The more years pass, the blurrier his memories become, but he remembers Natasha's flaming red hair, Tony's goatee, Pepper's warming smile, Sam's endless generosity. Clint, Laura, Sharon, Wanda, Peter, Nick. So many friends lost to the flu. So many deaths in such a short time. In the end, there was only  Thor, still alive, but back on Asgard after Jane's death, and Bruce, who decided to live as a recluse so as not to endanger the blooming bud of civilization Steve was trying to give life to.

(In thirteen years, Steve went to visit him three or four times, where he lives in Iowa. Bruce never changed his mind.)

Of course, Steve made new friends, Lili, Katie, Jessica, Luke; but the loneliness of his Missions always reminds him of old wounds, like a deep furrow in the ground, hidden under a layer of sand blown away at the slightest gust of wind.

In the deserted city of Gallup, New Mexico, where he stops for the night, he discovers a roadside hotel so brightly lit it repels the darkness and puts out the millions of stars in the sky. He blinks, flabbergasted. It's been a long time since he's seen so many neon lights.

There are cars parked in front of the place, but only one of them isn't covered with ocher dust – a black sports car, almost as old as his own truck, probably, one that brings back painful memories. Natasha had the exact same one, back in the day. A Corvette Stingray.

Through the still intact windows, Steve can see a man, standing next to the counter, a bottle of alcohol next to him. There are a lot more unopened bottles on the shelves behind the bar. Obviously, no one around here ever took the time to rob the place. He enters.

The man, who must have heard the sounds of his truck, is already facing him, body locked in a defensive position, like many other people Steve ran into during his Mission. But _that_ guy, unlike the ones who were brandishing empty rifles, he's clasping a tactical knife in his left hand, a metal hand, and pointing a semi-automatic crossbow towards Steve with his right. Steve swallows. An empty rifle is one thing. A 180lbs crossbow is another.

"Hi", he says softly. "Mind if I join you?"

The man looks at him silently, absolutely motionless, and when he slightly lowers his crossbow, Steve takes two steps towards him, hands raised, as usual.

"Name's Steve", he says. "What about you?"

Silence. Then the guy lets out an incredulous, bitter laugh, and puts his weapons back on the counter. Steve watches him closely, partly because he wants to make sure he's out of danger, but most importantly because the stranger, his face, reminds him terribly of someone he knew a long, long time ago, and of whom he has not thought for many years; a name so deeply buried in his memory he can't bring himself to dig it up.

"No name?" Steve says. "That's okay. Can I join you?"

The silent man seems to think about it. Finally, he curtly nods and picks up a fallen stool for Steve. Then he goes to the other side of the bar.

"Whiskey?" he asks, taking a glass and a bottle from the shelves. His voice is hoarse, probably unused for years. But Steve feels a violent shudder in his veins just from hearing it, and his breath catches. Then he shakes his head. It's stupid. He died more than a hundred years ago.

Without waiting for his answer, the man pours two glasses and pushes one on the counter with his metal hand, leaving a trail in the dust. Steve takes it, nodding his thanks.

"What are you doing here?" he asks. It's in the cities Steve is usually least likely to find survivors. When the vast majority of population disappears in less than a year, people get wary. They have not escaped successive epidemics of progressive flu just to die by the hands of a fellow man freed from laws, right and wrong. On their own, people would rather hide, live in the wild, safe from other humans, these animals.

That guy though, he drinks whiskey in a neon lit hotel, on the main road leading to a city, maybe small, but still a city. It's one of two options: either he's the naïve and reckless sort, either he's dangerous and doesn't fear for his life. And, looking at him right now, at his black tactical gear, at his standoffish expression, Steve wouldn't waste one second before betting on the second option.

The stranger puts down the bottle. Silence swathes him like a second skin. It could almost be his name. His gestures are so fluid he doesn't make the slightest sound, even for Steve's enhanced ears. He's more than good; he's trained. He's a assassin, without a single doubt.

And yet, Steve isn't afraid.

Silence looks at him. He's got blue eyes ( _just like Him_ ), a straight nose ( _just like Him_ ). His cheeks are hidden in his beard, but Steve can make out his red lips under it. He's breathtakingly handsome. ( _Just like Him.)_

Eventually, Silence shrugs.

"What about you?"

Some people find it hard to communicate, after years of solitude. Steve learned not to push them. If Silence wants to talk about Steve rather than himself, then that's what they'll do.

Steve sits on the stool Silence picked up for him and nurses his glass of whiskey in his hands.

"I'm looking for survivors", he says. "I'm traveling across the United States. We're about two thousands people gathered at the Center, and sometimes, people want to join us and live in community. I'm our only promotional means, now that radios and computers are dead. I'm recruiting, if you will."

Silence stares at him intensely. "The Center?"

"That's how we call our community. We first gathered in a sport center, at the very beginning. First, we were around ten, then twenty… Eventually, as we grew in number, we left the place, but the name stuck. We're in Brooklyn."

The man doesn't react, just listens to him, and Steve goes on. "We pool our talents. We've got water, electricity most of the time, thanks to solar panels… We've got food from the fields and from hunting. I'm convinced humans beings are not meant to live apart. They're meant to help each other. That's what we do. Everyone has their own role. We try to clean up the city. We're removing cars, debris, we bury the skeletons we find in apartments…"

"If _that's_ your recruiting argument, you can't be bringing back that many people with you."

Steve stares at him. It's the longer sentence he's pronounced since the beginning, and he doesn't know why, but it makes him smile. Even his voice feels silent. Steve shakes his head.

"I'm not telling that to the others. They realize once they get there."

"Oh yeah? False advertizing, huh?"

"Diplomacy, more like", Steve grins.

"Why are you telling me, then?"

Steve looks at Silence's knife, his crossbow, his tactical clothes. "Cause I have a feeling that this much is not going to scare you away."

Silence's beard twitches. There must be a smile, hidden underneath. "Ain't gonna convince me either."

Steve chuckles before looking around the place. Considering it's been thirteen years since the Fall, it's in rather good condition, but there's dust everywhere. "You're not living here, are you?" Steve asks Silence. "You're traveling, just like me."

"What makes you say that?"

"Too much undisturbed dust."

"Got here yesterday", Silence admits.

"Where were you going?"

He shrugs. For a moment, Steve thinks the answer to that question, as well as every other question he asked, will go down the drain, but after a while, Silence says, "No idea."

Steve nods. There's his best recruiting argument: a direction. Survivors don't know where to go. They don't know what to do. They have no purpose. It's enough to drive anybody crazy.

"You've been alone for thirteen years?" Steve asks.

Silence's face clouds over, but once again, he surprises Steve by answering. "I've been alone forever."

Steve is dying to ask him about it, but Silence's closed off look unequivocally indicates that he really doesn't want to dwell on the subject.

"What's your name, then?" he says again. "Am I allowed to have an answer, now? Can't keep calling you 'Silence' in my head."

The stranger stares at him blankly for a second (might be his way of showing surprise, Steve thinks), then he smiles.

"Silence. You gave me a name?"

"Had to, since you wouldn't tell me."

The man looks at him thoughtfully, then he slowly nods.

"My name is Silence."

Steve blinks. "You don't have a name?"

"I do. You just gave it to me." He smiles, but he still looks distant, and Steve wonders if he even remembers it. It's not unusual. Steve met a lot of people who had forgotten their own names after years of loneliness. He doesn't insist.

"Mind if I spend the night here? My truck isn't the best when it's nighttime." Silence looks intrigued, so he adds, "My neighbor at the Center tinkered with it a bit, put a solar panel on it. Hard to find gasoline, these days."

"Tell me about it", Silence sighs, looking at the Stingray parked in front of the hotel, visible through the windows. "Mileage's shit on mine. Can't even recall all the times I got stuck on the road and had to walk to find a house with cans of gas left before I could set off again. And around here, you can drive for miles and miles before you see a house."

"At least the sun rises every morning", Steve says.

"What do you do when it's overcast?"

"The engine still works, but I don't push it. In case it dies, I still have cans of gas in the back of the truck, but it's only for emergencies."

"Hybrid, huh? Convenient."

"You haven't answered my question", says Steve. "Mind if I crash here?"

Silence shrugs. "You don't have to ask me permission. I'm not your mother, and this place ain't mine. I'm just a visitor, just like you."

"I don't want to invade your personal space. That's weird, you know? The more space you've got, the more space you need. In town, some guy came to live in the apartment just below mine, although almost every other building in my street was unoccupied. I wondered why he wanted to be so close. It made me uncomfortable. Before, with four neighbors on the same floor, I didn't give a damn."

"You ever have four neighbors on the same floor?" Silence smiles. "No gigantic building just for you?"

Steve thinks back to the Stark Tower, a long time ago. After the Fall, he went there, briefly, but it wasn't the same, of course.

"Can't say I've ever been in your situation, but I see what you mean," Silence keeps talking.

But Steve is stuck on his previous sentence.

"You think I look like I live alone in a gigantic building? What makes you say that?"

For a second, Silence's face is just a blank mask. Steve knows he doesn't want to answer his question, and he wonders how he knows that, but he does, just as he can tell night from day. He'd met a lot of people, during his live, some with whom it clicked instantly, and some not. Since the Fall, he'd made friends, sometimes quickly took a liking to people. But it's the first time in his life he feels a total connection with a man he just met half an hour ago. Like he could feel the guy's thoughts, deeply hidden inside his heart, without even needing to see his face. It's profoundly unsettling.

It's probably because he looks so much like _him._

"Stark Tower", says Silence, and suddenly, Steve thinks the feeling is shared, that _Silence_ too can read his heart with disconcerting ease. He must be paling a bit, because Silence adds, "That's where you were, right? The Avengers. Captain America," he says with a small gesture in Steve's general direction.

Steve feels like his eyes are bulging out of his sockets. He hasn't heard that name in years. He gave it up even before the Fall, after Tony's death, some twenty years ago (heart attack – a malfunction of the Arc Reactor). Sure, during the Fall, Steve helped people as much as he could, but under his own identity. By then, Captain America had almost already been wiped from the collective consciousness.

But Silence remembers, twenty years later. He couldn't be much older than ten, though.

"How… How did you recognize me?"

Once again, Silence's face darkens. "I was one of your fans, back then."

And maybe it's because of their unexplained connection, but Steve knows, just as he knows Earth is round, that Silence is lying.

Still, he doesn't want to make him angry or upset him by insisting they talk about a subject he so obviously doesn't want to broach, so he nods, as if the explanation was satisfactory enough.

"I had neighbors", he finally says. "When I was young, in the thirties – last century's thirties – before I was Captain America. The bathroom was common to the entire floor, even. Imagine that." Steve says, just to make him laugh.

But he doesn't. His face is so expressionless it looks carved in marble, blanker than ever.

Steve gulps. Suddenly, he's not strong enough for that.

"Think I'm gonna go lie down. I drove all day, I'm spent. You don't mind?"

Silence shakes his head, a small gesture, before pointing to the door with his left hand. "Stairs are there. There's several rooms. Sheets are a little dusty."

"Not that much of a change from the rest of the world", Steve tries to joke. Silence's beard slightly twitches, a quick smile he knows is forced.

Steve doesn't know how to escape this weighed atmosphere. "Well then… Good night, B… _Silence."_

For a moment, his heart is beating so violently he feels slightly dizzy. His mouth moved without his consent. In front of him, Silence seems frozen to the spot, then he lowers his eyes to the counter and traces the edge of his tumbler still full of whiskey with his finger. "Good night", he says, his voice transparent.

His legs filled with concrete, Steve gets up from the stool and makes for the stairs. Opening the door, he takes a last look at the room. Silence is drinking his whiskey down in one go before pouring himself another. Steve turns away and climbs the stairs, cracking under his weight.

The first bedroom on the right is the one Silence claimed for himself, obviously. The sheets are rumpled, there's an opened black duffel bag on the floor. Steve stares at the room for a while, blood pulsing in his ears, then he closes the door and takes the room opposite, neat and tidy.

He can't sleep, that night. The thought is crossing his mind, again and again, on a loop.

_Are you Bucky?_

 

 

 

It's only when he opens he eyes that he realizes he managed to get some sleep, in the end. Anyone would have been afraid of falling asleep with a stranger armed with a knife and a crossbow in the next room, but Steve wasn't. Not only because Death hates him, won't let him get too close, pushes him back to life when he does, but also because, instinctively, he trusts Silence.

He didn't sleep long, but he still dreamed of Bucky, his shaven jaw, his hair pulled back, the day before he was leaving for Europe, so young, _so young._ When he wakes, he wonders if he maybe imagined the whole thing. Projected Bucky's face on a stranger. Bucky's dead. He saw him fall off the train. It was dark, yesterday. Maybe Silence looks like him a bit, and Steve's noisy brain did the rest.

After making the bed and gathering his belongings, Steve opens the door to see that the room opposite his is wide open, tidied up and absolutely empty. His heart leaps in his chest. What if Silence is gone? Without even saying goodbye? Of course, they don't know each other, they didn't make any promises, they have no obligation whatsoever to each other, but Steve hopes to God Silence didn't sneak out and left when he was asleep. He still hasn't convinced him to come to the Center, and for reasons he can't quite fathom, he's also very reluctant to leave him.

The bar is empty when Steve makes his way downstairs. But glancing through the bay window, he sees the Corvette, looking even sleeker in the bright daylight, and he lets out a small sigh of relief.

Silence is outside, sitting on a bench, bathing in the sun. He's wearing blue polarized sunglasses that hide his eyes, and still, when he raises his head to him, Steve feels like someone just punched him in the gut. It wasn't his imagination. The guy could be Bucky's twin brother, and it's even more obvious in the daylight. He stares at him for a moment, and Silence stares back, before finally saying, "Hi. Slept well?"

 _Bucky!_ Steve's heart cries.

"Slept okay," his voice lies.

Silence raises an eyebrow, and Steve knows he knows he's lying. It's still very much a two-way connection, it seems. He sits next to him on the bench. "Wanna come to the Center?"

Silence stares a him, looking surprised to be asked so directly. Steve doesn't even give him time to answer before he adds, "We've got water, electricity. Regular food supplies. We're a community, but there's still plenty of space to live. Entire streets just for you. There's no obligation other than contributing to the community, in whatever capacity, to give back a small part of what you're taking. Could be anything. We're not picky."

For a long time, Silence just watches him. He changed his clothes, this morning. No more combat gear, tactical jacket; he's wearing a black cap, a red henley, a brown hoodie, jeans and sneakers. It doesn't make him look any less dangerous. In fact, danger oozes from his entire body like an intoxicating perfume.

Then he lowers his eyes to his already dusty sneakers, his metal hand on his thigh twitching like an electric shock just ran through it. His expression is completely unreadable.

"I'm not sure I'm ready to be a part of society yet", he finally says in a low voice.

Steve feels a crushing wave of disappointment. It's so overwhelming he almost wants to cry, which is absolutely ridiculous. He doesn't even know the guy, for God's sake. "You sure?"

"Wouldn't know how to contribute, anyway. Can't do much."

"You could be security. Looters come in sometimes and attack us. We need people to keep us safe. You were military, right?"

Silence's gaze is utterly blank, the look Steve now translates as his shocked expression. "What makes you say that?"

Steve shrugs slowly. "The way you hold yourself. The outfit. The… The metal hand."

He expects a reaction, or rather a non-reaction, and of course, as expected, Silence freezes. Steve waits for it to pass. When it does, Silence looks at his metal hand before quickly shoving it in his pocket.

"I'm sorry," Steve says, "I didn't want to…"

"Sorry, Steve, thanks for the offer, but I'm not going."

All of Steve's hopes collapses like a cheese soufflé. They're going to go their separate ways, it is the inevitable truth. Steve kind of wants to reach into his chest and rip off his heart so Silence can keep it with him wherever he'll go, and he doesn't understand why.

_He's a stranger, Steve. You met him literally yesterday._

His disappointment must be extremely visible on his face, because Silence gently puts his flesh hand on Steve's left arm.

"Want some company, during your journey?"

"I… What?" Steve looks at him, stunned. Silence raises his sunglasses on his hair and observes him intensely. In the morning light, his eyes are terribly blue.

"Can't be easy, trying to herd lost sheep from all across the USA. You probably feel lonely, sometimes. You want company?"

Steve's throat feels so dry, suddenly. "Are you seriously asking? Do you… Do you want to travel with me?"

It's Silence's turn to shrug. "If you'll have me."

" _If I'll have you?_ God, I…"

God. Of course he'll have him. Who are they kidding.

Then he forcefully reminds himself that they _don't know each other_ and Silence must think his enthusiasm is odd. He tries to calm himself, but his heart still beats wildly in his chest.

"Thanks, Bu… _Silence._ I gladly accept."

His tongue almost slipped again, and Silence freezes again, but then he grins like nothing happened. He's still got his hand on Steve's arm. "Whenever you want to leave, then, I'm ready."

"Are you going to leave your Corvette here?" Steve casts a quick look at the Stingray.

Silence frowns. Even underneath his beard, Steve can see his jaw working. He takes his hand off Steve's arm and shoves it in his pocket like the left one. "It was a friend's. I used it well. Can let it rest, now."

There has to be a complicated story underneath all that, but Steve doesn't plan on asking questions. If there's the slightest chance Silence might change his mind and decide he finally won't come with him, God knows Steve is not going to risk it until the Corvette is long since behind them.

"Plus the mileage isn't great," Silence adds. "Really inconvenient."

"My truck's not very fast, though". Silence ought to know. "That's one of the downsides of solar panels."

Silence grins at him. "It's okay, Steve. We're not in a hurry."

Steve wants to drink his smile.

_But we don't know each other._

_We don't._

He has trouble remembering that. It feels like he's known Silence his whole life.

 

 

 

"Where are we going?" Silence is holding his elbow through the open window on the passenger side. His sleeves are rolled up, and Steve realizes that it's not just his hand that's metal. It goes at least up to his upper arm. Possibly his shoulder.

The prosthesis fascinates him. It's one of the most advanced he's ever seen. Silence moves it with such dexterity it looks like a real hand. It also probably can do some things a real hand cannot.

"I've never tried to recruit in California." Steve says, watching the road. "We could go, if you're up for it."

"Sure, pal."

The trip is nice, when you've got company, even if said company doesn't speak much, and never about himself. From the corner of his eye, Steve sees the reflection of the sun on his prosthesis, and he can't help but cast quick glances at it.

It goes like that for a moment, then Silence sighs. "You can ask. I can see you're dying of curiosity."

"Who built it, your arm?"

Silence looks surprised. "Thought you were gonna ask me how I lost it. That's what people usually ask."

"And you never tell them, do you?"

"Never", Silence grins.

"Which is why I'm asking something else. Where did you get it?"

He sighs again. "Stark Foundation."

"Stark? Tony?" Steve looks over to Silence, taken aback. "Tony build that?"

_But he died twenty years ago. How old were you, twenty years ago?_

Silence avoids his gaze. "I got it through Stark Foundation", he stubbornly repeats.

 _You told me I could ask,_ Steve thinks. "How old are you?"

He really, really wants to know.  Silence doesn't seem fazed by the sudden change of subject. He probably made the connection just like Steve did. And, unsurprisingly, he doesn't answer.

Steve sighs. They stay silent for a few hours.

Still, even when he doesn't say much, it's nice to travel with Silence. He seems content just to be there, looking at the arid landscape, one hand hanging out of the window, sunglasses on his nose, hair disheveled. He doesn't talk, but his mere presence is soothing. As if Steve were standing next to his own personal solar panel.

They meet someone in the early afternoon, in the east of Arizona. A middle-aged woman, alone, with short white hair, watching them approaching with suspicious eyes. As always, Steve takes a step towards her with his hands raised. Silence follows, sunglasses on his hair. In the orange glow of the afternoon, his blue eyes stand out beautifully, but his beard probably doesn't inspire confidence in strangers (at least, those who _aren't_ Steve).

"Hi," Steve says with the friendliest tone he can manage. "I'm Steve, this is Silence. Are you alone?"

The women doesn't answer. Yet another one who's not fond of words, it seems, but Steve doesn't let that discourage him.

"We're traveling the States to find survivors," he says. "We have a small community of people in New York. Everyone having something to bring to it is welcome."

"What about those who don't bring anything?" the woman asks. "Do you leave them at the door?"

Steve looks at her, surprised. "We can always find a way, I suppose." He feels a bit unsettled. "As long as you're bringing your good will."

Suddenly, the woman seems to lower her guard, and holds out her hand. "I'm Ororo. I'm not alone, actually. My dad is with me. Some stability might benefit him, but he's old and very ill."

"We've got a hospital," Steve said. "Well, it's more like a health center than an hospital, truth be told, but we have two doctors, three nurses, and a pharmacist."

"Do you have medicine?"

"Our pharmacist is trying to restart a pharmaceutical lab, but it takes time. For now, we have to make do with what we find in old drugstores. They're past their expiration date, but it's the only thing we've got."

Steve can tell she looks tempted. She thinks about it, Steve and Silence watching her, then she nods.

"I'd like to go. But we don't have a car. Mine ran out of gas about a month ago, we have been stuck here since. There's nothing around. No car, no gas."

"I can lend you mine", Silence says.

Steve turns back to look at him, bewildered. "The Stingray?"

"She needs a car to go there," Silence shrugs. "And that way, I can get it back."

Steve feels like his heart is swelling, swelling, inflating like a balloon someone just blew into. "Get it back? You mean you're going to come home with me?"

Silence stands utterly still, and Steve knows he wasn't planning on saying that, but it doesn't change the fact that it was from the heart. Steve is floating on cloud nine.

"I…"

"Oh no no no", Steve interrupts, "you can't retract that. You're coming home with me."

During a second, he fears he's being too pushy, but Silence rolls his eyes, his mouth twitching, amused. "We'll see about that. Back to the topic – she can have my car."

"But it's in Gallup."

"We drive them. It's only a three hours ride."

Anyway, Steve doesn't plan on leaving the woman and her elderly father stuck here if he can help them. He nods, and so does Ororo.

"Come on," she says.

Her father is inside a small decrepit house a little further away. He's very old, bald and wrinkled, sitting in a wheelchair, but when he sees them, his face and his faded blue eyes lighten up.

"Charles," Ororo whispers, kneeling next to his chair. "We're going on a trip, okay?"

Looking at them now, Steve wonders if the old man will have the strength to endure a days-long journey. Silence is thinking the same thing, if his narrowed eyes are anything to go by. Next to Charles, there's a huge pile of medicine.

"Alzheimer's", Ororo explains. "He has seizures, sometimes, and he's a telepath, so when it happens, it never ends well for anyone."

Suddenly, Steve has an epiphany. _Telepath. Charles. Ororo._ It still took him entirely too long to put two and two together.

"Charles Xavier? Storm? Are you the X-Men?"

Ororo gasps. Silence looks at Steve, then Charles, then he nods quietly, like he gets it too.

"Do you know us?" Ororo asks, flabbergasted.

"I knew you before the Fall. Met Charles a few times. Some friends of us are always talking about you, back at the Center. Bobby, Kitty…"

It's then that he realizes his "us" includes Silence, even though he's never even set foot in the Center. What an idiot.

"Bobby", Ororo repeats, and her eyes are filling with tears. "Bobby's alive? And Kitty?"

"Alive and kicking. They'll be happy to see you again."

"Bobby… Kitty…" Charles Xavier mutters.

Now that they know their friends are there, refusing to go seems out of the question. Ororo looks suddenly very determined. "Let's go, Charles. I'll pack our stuff, okay?"

"Steve…" Charles says, his voice rusty.

"Yes, his name is Steve," Ororo smiles gently. "Did you read it in his head?"

"Steve Rogers…"

Steve chuckles. Ororo looks back at him, wide-eyed.

"Looks like he remembers me."

"Steve _Rogers?_ You're Captain America?"

"I'm Steve Rogers. Captain America disappeared a long time ago."

The United States doesn't even exist anymore. There are no longer borders between states and countries. Steve only uses their name because he's used to it and it's easier that way. There can't be a Captain America when there's no more America.

In any case, Ororo last remnants of suspicion melt always instantly, and she starts packing.

Later, when they're in the truck, Silence next to Steve and Charles and Ororo asleep in the backseats, Silence looks at him, leaning against the headrest. There's an odd expression of tenderness in his eyes. The kind of look he could give Steve after waking up next to him, and once again, Steve has to force himself to remember that he doesn't know this man, doesn't know the first thing about his life, that they're total strangers to each other. It seems like Silence too has a hard time remembering it.

"You said Captain America is gone," he says quietly so as not to wake up Ororo and Charles, "but you keep acting like him. Doing everything you can to save the world. What little can still be saved, anyway." Steve opens his mouth to answer, but Silence is quicker, as if he read his thoughts. "No, you're right. That's not a Captain America thing. That's a Steve Rogers thing."

This time, Steve turns to look at him. The tips of his fingers are tingling, like they do every time he thinks it could be Bucky, just there, if Bucky hadn't died falling off a train in 1945.

"Because you know me so well, huh?" he murmurs.

The usual blank mask falls on Silence's face. _You're the one who started it, though_ , Steve thinks. It's like walking in a minefield. You never know what's going to set it off, and sometimes, the one setting it off is Silence himself, which does not make it any easier.

 _You'd tell me, if you were Bucky, right?_ Steve thinks, but doesn't dare to say.

But it can't be.

Bucky's dead.

 

 

 

They find the Stingray just where they left it, and Steve gives Ororo and Charles supplies for the trip, food, water and gas. But it's already late when they arrive in Gallup, so they all decide to stop for the night and hit the road again in the morning. The hotel has enough rooms. There's even a small lake, less than a mile away, where Steve goes to soak for a bit and rid himself of the dust that clings to his skin when he rides the car with open windows (air conditioning is a luxury they don't have). He's almost certain Silence went there yesterday to clean himself up before he changed clothes.

Silence and him help Charles going up the stairs, to a third bedroom, since they claimed the first two. Ororo takes a fourth one, just opposite Charles' door. "I hope he won't wake you up," she says. "Sometimes, at night, he has seizures. He inadvertently gets inside other people's mind. He took his medication, but I thought I should warn you."

Steve's not sure if Charles gets inside his mind that night, but he has a strange dream where his soul separates from his body, which stays lying on the bed while he gazes at it, standing up. Then, after a quiet moment of contemplation, he goes straight through his door and enters Silence's room. He's thrashing on the bed, brow deeply furrowed, flinching and grunting, gesturing with his right hand as if trying to push someone away with a knife. Steve, still immaterial, kneels next to his bed and lets his transparent hand hover over his forehead.

"Calm down, Bucky," he murmurs soothingly. "Everything's okay."

Bucky opens his eyes, his big blue eyes, the last thing Steve saw before he lost him forever.

"Stevie," he says. He looks so young, right there.

"Calm down," Steve says again. "I'm here. Get back to sleep, Buck."

Bucky nods, closes his eyes, and falls back asleep. Satisfied, Steve goes through the two walls separating them and returns to his body.

When he wakes up the next morning, he vaguely remembers it, like an old, blurred memory in sepia tones. "Slept well?" he asks Silence, who shrugs evasively and watches him the same way Bucky did in his dream.

"Did you come into my room last night?" Silence's voice has that weirdly calm, transparent quality again. Steve stares at him, shocked, fingertips tingling.

"I don't think so. Why do you ask?"

Did he sleepwalk? Is it possible he went inside Silence's room while thinking he was Bucky?

"It felt like you did. But it doesn't matter."

"You look like you'd stab in the neck anyone who'd enter your room uninvited," Steve says jokingly, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

"Which is exactly the reason why it's probably a dream." Silence looks thoughtful.

Ororo and Charles decide to leave the hotel a bit later. Silence gives them the Stingray keys, which they promise to leave pristine in New York, and after their goodbyes, they resume their journey, going by another road to have better chances to meet someone else.

The first few hours are spent in silence, but then they usually are, and it's peaceful.

"Where do you wanna go?" Steve finally asks.

"Doesn't matter." _As long as we're going together,_ is what he seems to be thinking, and Steve wonders if that weird attraction between them is shared. He wonders if it's too embarrassing to talk about it, but long years of loneliness taught him to speak his mind when he has something to say. No time to beat around the bush.

"Ever met someone and thought, 'that person and I, we're going to be friends, we have to be'? Someone you're just meeting, but you feel like you've known them forever? See what I mean?"

Silence turns to watch him. Steve almost expects him to smile and tease him, _that what you think of me?_ , but no. He observes him intensely and nods once.

"I do, actually. Happened to me twice."

"What happened? Did you become friends with them?"

"First time around, yeah. Second time around…" He stays silent for a second, then lowers his eyes towards his hands. "That'll depend on you."

Steve feels like his heart has been pierced by an arrow. _Jesus,_ that man.

"I think you will, then," he says in a quiet voice.

Silence grins at him, with the same fond look he had when he was talking about Captain America, the day before.

"What about the first person?" Steve asks. "What happened to them?"

Silence's face falls, and Steve wants to put his foot in his mouth. He should have savored his tender expression a bit longer before shattering it. For a while, Silence doesn't say anything.

"It's okay if you don't wanna talk about it." Steve keeps his eyes on the road. "I'm just too curious."

"We lost contact," Silence suddenly says, an edge in his voice. "Entirely beyond our control. Nothing we could do."

Steve looks at him sadly.

"Were you close?"

He can imagine what the answer's going to be when Silence keeps his eyes on the dashboard, his face an unreadable mask again, but still, he nods. "Very close."

Then he gets back to looking at the scenery through the window, puts on his shades, and Steve knows he won't get another word out of him. Not right now, anyway.

But he thinks back on what Silence said, _that'll depend on you,_ and his lips twitch with the beginning of a smile. For the first time in a long while, the ghosts of his past don't weigh so much on his shoulders. He feels almost happy. It's such a weird sensation.

 

 

 

They stop in western Arizona to spend the night in an abandoned roadside bar, without electricity (this one obviously doesn't have a still functional backup generator, like the hotel in Gallup had), and without water nearby, but they put rocking chairs outside and Steve finds beer in the cellar. He gives one to Silence and they sit and gaze up at the stars, stretching in the infinite sky above their heads, while sipping their warm beers. It's stale, and it's fucking awesome.

Since the Fall, since cities are no longer alight, nights are mind-blowingly beautiful. The Milky Way stretches across the sky, bright and shiny like a silver thread, and Steve gasps every time he looks up. It's breathtaking. Tonight, he's so happy to share this moment with Silence that his throat is constricting with emotion.

"Never really appreciated it before," Silence whispers. "The stars. I knew the constellation names so I could impress girls, but beside that, I never really had much interest in it, you know? Now, I can spend entire nights outside, gazing at the sky and wondering about our place in the Universe. Think humanity is doomed to disappear?"

"I don't think so," Steve says. "As long as there are survivors, there will always be exponential growth. Mankind will be reborn from its ashes, and it will thrive again, in a few hundred years."

Crickets are chirping in the dark. Insects are starting to come back, now that there's no one left to water the fields with pesticides. The whole ecosystem is slowly recovering from the harm done by humans, and Steve dearly misses the friends he lost during the Fall, of course, he regrets that the price to pay for it was for humanity to almost disappear, but seeing the Earth slowly reasserting itself soothes his mind. Sometimes, he wonders if Nature herself didn't create the virus to protect their good old Earth.

Then he realizes he's probably wrong. Mankind destroyed itself. Nobody else is responsible.

"I wasn't a very social guy, before." Silence suddenly says. "You'll probably think I'm a horrible person for saying this, but I kinda like this Earth, right now, with so few people. No more laws. No more governments. Only silence and space. I find it comforting."

He stares at Steve as if expecting a violent form of protest, but Steve only nods. "I know." He shakes his head. "I'm not saying it's better than before, because I'd rather nobody had died for it, but. It's not without benefits."

"And still, you wanna recreate a civilization."

"I hope that humanity will have learned its lesson before then. I am a hopeless optimist."

Silence smiles. "I could tell."

"Peggy said something to me, before she died," Steve says thoughtfully. It was about forty years before, but the memory of it still clings in Steve's mind. Silence shoots him a questioning look. He doesn't ask who 'Peggy' is, even if he probably wasn't born when she died. But Steve doesn't think about that. It seems evident to him that Silence should know Peggy. Everybody should know Peggy.

"She told me we mucked up the world, when I was under the ice," he recalls. "And that everybody had to do the best they could, and sometimes it meant starting over. I don't think she could have imagined the Fall, the successive epidemics, but when everything calmed down, when it was all over with, I thought I had to follow her advice and start over. That's what convinced me to create the Center."

Silence nods. He hands Steve another beer.

That night, instead of going to bed early to leave as soon as possible in the morning, they chat about this and that until the sun rises.

Steve feels at peace with himself.

The next day, they wake up on the rocking chairs, and Steve's flabbergasted by their own recklessness – sleeping outside is the open door to bandits or wild animals and all sort of dangers, even if he doesn't doubt the fact that, between him and Silence, they can protect themselves.

It's past noon when they leave their refuge for the night. The sky is still an insolent blue, the golden dust still whirls in the hot wind. It feels like yesterday, with Silence by his side, sunglasses on his eyes, hand hanging outside of the car. No words exchanged between them.

"Will you come back with me to New York, then?" Steve asks, quite some time later. He's said it so low he's not even sure it was audible, but Silence turns to him. He eyes him thoughtfully, then he gives him a half-smile.

"I did tell them I'd want my car keys back."

"But before that, you abandoned it in Gallup, so I thought it might not be a priority to you."

Silence sighs.

"You still got time to think about it," Steve says. "And it's okay if you say no."

Except for the part where it's not. The idea's enough for Steve to feel like there's a gaping, black chasm opening in his stomach, and he's wondering what happened to him, in just _three days,_ that he came to depend on a man he doesn't know.

That's something he noticed, after the Fall: people get attached stronger, faster. Maybe it's because they can't afford to be picky, maybe it's the tragedy of it all binding them all the more effectively. The world has changed, and social cues changed with it. And if Steve doesn't want to leave a man he barely met, who can judge him, really?

"I didn't leave the Stingray because I wanted to get rid of it," Silence says. "I left it so that I could go with you. If I can get it back at the Center, then I'll probably go there. With you."

Steve feels his heart hammering in his chest, hope pumping through his veins, but he tries to take it down a notch. "And then you'll be on your way?"

Silence's eyes are so blue, especially when they're fixed on him. "That'll depend."

"On what?"

"On where you'll go." Silence whispers.

For a moment, Steve feels like his heart going to burst. Black spots are swimming in his vision. He wants to reach out and grab Silence's hand, but he's so overwhelmed he can't even move.

When he finally pulls himself together, he just silently nods. He doesn't trust that he'll be able to form words. Silence watches him as if he understands the inner struggle, and – actually, he probably does. Under his usual blankness, he looks embarrassed and exalted at the same time, and Steve doesn't know how he can get that just from the little crease between his eyebrows and the twitching of his mouth.

The silence between them, for once, seems electrically charged, until a coyote crosses the road just in front of them and Steve, taken off guard, abruptly swerves to miss it. He slams on the brake, the wheels screech on the dry road, and for a long while, the whole world is absolutely motionless, time suspended. His heart is pulsing in his temples.

Then, out of the blue, Silence bursts out laughing, and Steve turns towards him, and he's certain, for a second or two, that his entire body is going to melt. It's without a doubt the most beautiful sound he's ever heard in his life. He wants to sleep in that laugh, wrap it around himself as if it were a blanket.

_Bucky used to laugh the same way._

It's so hard not to connect Bucky and Silence. Deep inside him, they're blending together, and that's probably the reason Steve enjoys his company so much.

He mustn't forget that Silence is Silence and Bucky is Bucky, and one lived more than a hundred years ago, and the other one, in his car, doesn't look like he's older than thirty.

 _Sure, cause it actually means something,_ his mind retorts. _You don't look like you're older than thirty either._

But not everyone's a supersoldier like he is, he reasons.

_Sure, but maybe there's a good reason he survived the Fall._

Silence wipes his eyes, his bout of laughter fading out, and he looks at Steve, completely out of breath. "You should have seen your face, Stevie!"

Steve shakes his head, amused – and then, he realized how Silence just called him, and he gapes at him, dumbstruck. Silence realized it too, because all emotions instantly leave his face. He looks like a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

"God," Steve shuts his eyes, leaning on the headrest. "It's driving me crazy."

Ever so slowly, Silence turns to look at him. His face is closed off, and Steve knows he's wary. He doesn't say anything for a long while, as if wondering if he should ask or not, and he finally gives in. "What is?"

"You're… I'm sorry, it's so stupid. You're reminding me of someone I knew a long time ago."

"Do I?" Silence says noncommittally. "A friend?" He tries to act casual, but Steve feels the tenseness emanating from him in waves.

"The best of friends. A brother."

Silence turns his gaze to the road, the dry expanse of earth stretching for miles in the distance. "What happened to him?"

"Died during the war. Fell off a train, before my eyes. It was my fault."

Silence turns to him so sharply Steve hears his neck cracking. "Why do you say that? You didn't push him, did you?"

"Of course I didn't, but I…"

"Then it's not your fault." He sounds so final, although he doesn't know anything. Steve smiles bitterly.

"I didn't catch him when he fell."

"You can't blame yourself for…"

"I asked him to follow me to war. He'd been through hell already, and I forced him to sign up for that shit again."

"He would have followed you even if you had told him to go back h…"

"It was my fault!" Steve shouts. "He died because of me." He stays silent, a few second, just to give himself enough courage to admit the terrible truth. "And I died because of him."

Silence stares at him, pale as a ghost. "What?" he whispers. "What did you say? Steve?"

"Know what happened to Captain America? I was trapped under the ice for about seventy years. My plane crashed in the Atlantic."

Silence gapes at him, a horrified look on his beautiful face, because he knows what Steve really means. "You… You did it on purpose?" He whispers. "Because… _your friend_ was dead?"

"I didn't do it on purpose," Steve moderates. "I did it so that I could save the planet."

"But?"

"But I could have tried harder to look for an alternative solution. If there even was one."

A heavy atmosphere envelops them. Crickets seem to stop singing, the wind seems to stop blowing, and when Silence turns away to look at the view through the window, Steve understands that the world is keeping quiet because Silence is angry with him.

He restarts the Raptor and gets back on the road.

Silence's anger makes no more sense than the unexplained fondness Steve feels for him. _Maybe he is Bucky,_ his heart whispers, and for the first time, Steve finds himself seriously considering the possibility. _But Bucky's dead,_ his reason says. Bucky died before his eyes, more than a hundred years ago. And even if he had survived, how could he still be alive today?

Then, he has his epiphany. Zola. The scientist who experimented on Bucky and his unit when Steve got them out in Azzano. Bucky always refused to talk about it, and Steve always respected his choice, but he did notice, during the year that followed, that Bucky's wounds healed exceptionally quickly, that he couldn't seem to tire, that he was stronger than before.

What on earth led him to believe that Bucky died falling in that ravine, when he had survived wounds that would have killed anyone else during the war? Why didn't he go look for him, to make sure he wasn't dead, or even just to retrieve his body if he were? _War,_ people had told him. _We don't have the time. We must move on._ He was so dumb with grief he hadn't even tried to argue.

What if Bucky had been alive during all that time?

He glances at Silence, who's still stubbornly looking the other way. He's still fuming, anger bleeding out of him, cold as ice, and Steve sighs.

If Bucky was alive, why wasn't he there when he woke up in the new century? If Silence is Bucky, why does he want to keep it a secret from Steve?

When they stop for the night, they've barely exchanged three words for hours, and Silence immediately gets off the car, picks up his bag and stalks away, not towards the roadside restaurant they stopped next to, somewhere in eastern California, but towards the arid plain that stretches all the way to the mountains in the distance.

 _Is he gonna leave me?_ Steve wonders. _Again?_

He hesitates to follow him, but as if he heard his thoughts (and he probably did, Steve thinks), Silence turns to him. "Set us up for the night", he shouts so Steve can hear him clearly. "I'll be back."

A weight Steve wasn’t aware existed leaves his chest, and he gets to work. It's not difficult. The restaurant is the only building for miles and miles around. He grabs bottles of water and food from the back of the car and puts it on one of the tables. Upstairs, the first room he opens is a double room. Two twins beds with a nightstand between them. He immediately claims it. Maybe Silence will want to sleep in the other bed, he secretly thinks.

_If he ever comes back._

The sun sets, the shadows stretching on the ground, and Silence still isn't back. Steve waits for him in front of the restaurant, sitting on the sidewalk, and he watches the stars getting alight one after the other.

Finally, a noise gets his attention. Behind the palm trees that line the restaurant, the only trees around, a dark shadow appears. Silence is back, two rabbits in his hands. Steve stares at him, stunned, and Silence shrugs. "Why waste our food when we can hunt?"

It's probably how he's lived since the Fall, like everyone else who can't afford to cultivate fields.

"Thanks," he says quietly.

Steve takes his portable oil stove in the car. Silence prepares the rabbits. No word is exchanged between them. Steve knows it's because Silence is still mad at him for what he said, mad at him for something that happened over a hundred years ago, something that is not even his concern.

Unless it is.

Silence goes searching in the restaurant's kitchen to see if he finds something to go with the meat, and when he comes back, his cold distance from a moment before is totally gone, and he looks amazed. "Look, Steve!" He's holding something in his head, and Steve has to squint to make out an old dusty instant coffee jar.

"Coffee?"

"A whole jar!"

Coffee's not the only thing that became scarce after the Fall, but it's probably the one Steve missed the most. He comes closer, incredulous. "Wow, Buck!"

Silence freezes, and only then does Steve realize what he said. He sighs, angry at himself. Silence was just smiling, and Steve is already ruining it. "Sorry", he adds. " _Silence._ " He emphasizes the word, because the more time passes, and the less Steve can bring himself to believe it's not Bucky just there, in front of him. Most importantly, Silence still doesn't trust Steve enough to tell him his real name, and it didn't bother him, until then, but suddenly, it's the only thing he can think about.

And he knows Silence gets it, because Silence _gets him,_ and he gets Silence. The connection between the two of them is so real it's almost palpable, almost visible, like silver threads linking one heart to the other.

And still, Silence says nothing. He puts the coffee jar on the table and goes back to the kitchen to bring plates, cutlery and cups he carefully wiped the dust off. Steve doesn't ask anything. Not right now, anyway.

But later, after they eat the rabbits (perfectly cooked by Silence), after they drink the stale coffee with water boiled on the stove (which still makes them sigh with happiness), after they put two chairs outside to gaze at the stars again, Steve finds courage. "Will you tell me your name, someday?"

Silence turns to him. He looks hesitant.

"You already call me Stevie", Steve adds. "Do you really want me to keep calling you Silence for years?"

This time, Silence grins at him. "You see us staying together for years?"

"Don't you?"

Steve watches his expression clouding, the shrug of his shoulders. "You never know what could happen. You've known me for three days."

"I feel like I've known you for centuries."

A shooting star crosses the sky, but it's him Silence watches. "I don't want to tell you my name", he finally says, "because I don't exist. At least, I didn't. When we met, in Gallup, you gave me a name, you gave me a life. I was a ghost, before."

"A ghost?"

 _What happened to you?_ Steve wonders. _What the hell happened to you, Bucky?_

"A ghost", Silence repeats. "A puppet. A weapon. A killer."

"You think I'd reject you if you told me what happened to you?" Steve asks, his tone incredulous.

"No, Steve", Silence says quietly. "I think you'd be sad and angry. I don't want you to be sad and angry."

"So that's why you won't tell me? I can handle it, you know."

"I will tell you. Once I'm ready."

Steve doesn't have anything to answer to that. So he simply nods and smiles at Silence. "I'll hit the sack."

In the bedroom, he takes the bed further away from the door, which he leaves wide open, so Silence knows that he's welcome. Later, he hears his footsteps in the stairs, on the floor. They stop at the open doorway.

Then he hears him step inside the room, the other bed creaks, and Steve smiles.

 

 

 

When he wakes up in the morning, Silence is asleep in the bed next to his, hair a mess on the pillow, mouth slightly open, drooling a bit, and Steve, feeling his heart bursting with extraordinary tenderness, wants to kneel at his side and slide his hand through his dark hair, on his bearded cheek. _Bucky,_ his heart murmurs.

He wants to explore his entire body, uncover each mark, each scar that would bring him back to the Bucky he knew, that would constitute a solid proof the two men are one and the same.

But even as he thinks about it, he quickly becomes aware that he's wrong. Silence might have been born inside James Buchanan Barnes' body, but something happened in his life, something that erased Bucky and brought Silence forth. And Steve is not allowed to know. Somehow, he's scared of knowing. Silence is right: neither of them is ready yet.

Silence sleeps in a tee-shirt. Steve stares at his biceps. He wants to put his hand on it. Him and Bucky never were intimate, before the war, even if Steve thought about it sometimes. But it was another time, and Bucky had a million girls at his feet, and Steve couldn't fathom what he could see in a skinny, stubborn punk like him, and then Peggy appeared.

He's thought about it, but nothing ever happened, neither with Bucky nor with any other man.

And yet, when he looks at Silence, it regularly takes his breath away. He wants to caress his cheeks, kiss his eyelids, touch his stomach, lick his neck. Silence is beautiful, so beautiful he could weep with veneration. Bucky was handsome too, but Silence takes that to another level. He has a depth, a seriousness, a sadness Steve never witnessed in Bucky (at least, not before the war; 1944 was something else entirely).

Steve can't stop himself crouching at his side like he wants to. He doesn't touch him, he just watches him, and wonders how Bucky's death could have stopped him for one second believing that it was him. He shouldn't trust death. He defied it several times already.

As if he knows he's being observed, Silence slightly opens his eyes. They watch each other, without a word, a strange moment that feels suspended in time, then Silence smiles lazily and closes his eyes again. "Are you watching me sleep, Stevie? That's creepy."

Steve goes as red as beet. "No, I…"

Silence shifts to the side and pulls Steve by the arm. Steve tumbles on the bed next to him. For one second, he doesn't know what to do, then he thinks, _oh, screw this,_ and lies down next to Silence, head on his shoulder, arm on his stomach. Silence laces his fingers with his.

His body is warm, Steve notes. Bucky was always the one with the warmer body, even after Steve became a supersoldier. Steve burrows his nose in the crook of his neck, where the smell of his skin is mind-blowing. His heart is hammering violently. Under his cheek, he can feel Silence's metal shoulder.

_What happened to him?_

"We're weird, aren't we?" Steve whispers. "We barely know each other, but I already need you like a sunflower needs the sun."

Silence squeezes his fingers. "Who's gonna judge us? Normality didn't save mankind. Who cares if we're weird?"

 _True,_ Steve thinks, and he closes his eyes, Silence's smell in his lungs. He almost feels like he's back in 1940, in their small apartment in Brooklyn, when they could only afford one room and shared one bed all year long.

"I missed you", he whispers so low he's not sure Silence picks it up – but Silence hears everything, even what he doesn't say, and he doesn't answer, but he squeezes his hand a little tighter.

Steve wakes up again later in the morning. Silence is still sleeping against him, legs intertwined with his, and Steve carefully pulls away and gets up to go make coffee.

Silence comes downstairs about half an hour later. When he sees the coffee Steve prepared, he gives him a bright smile. "God bless America", he says after taking the first gulp, and Steve laughs.

They're back in the truck later in the morning, in a mission to find a water hole to wash themselves. Steve fills up his bottles (lakes and river are so much cleaner since humans disappeared) and they both rince their spare clothes.

When they resume their journey, Silence takes the wheel. "Still going to L.A.?" He asks.

"Sure. Unless you've got another destination in mind."

"Nope. I go where you lead."

They take the I-40 to cross California. Considering the limited speed of the truck, the fact that they left late in the morning, and the abandoned cars sometimes blocking their way, Steve doesn't think they'll make it before dawn, but he doesn't care. Since Silence joined him, the trip is so much funnier. He sings old country songs louder than the radio until Silence bursts into laughter and the car deviates. Silence himself doesn't sing, despite all the efforts Steve puts into convincing him to have a duet.

"I don't wanna make your ears bleed", he says each and every time.

Then Silence asks him questions about his career as Captain America. If he misses it. Steve shrugs. "I miss saving people, I guess. Throwing myself in the heat of the action. Now, things are different, but I still feel full of energy I can't redistribute. I have to go running for hours so I can calm down. At the Center, I spar with some of my friends."

"Do they win?"

"Often enough", Steve smiles. "Most of them are mutants. Hard to fight someone when you're passing through their body."

Silence laughs. "What about the Avengers?" He asks. "Do you miss them?"

"Yes, of course. But I can't do anything about it. I mourned them for a long time, but now, I just cherish their memories. I couldn't have saved them, even if I'd tried. Some are still alive. Bruce lives in Iowa. Thor has returned on Asgard. It helps, a bit. But it's Natasha I miss the most. Black Widow", he adds even if he's sure Silence knows who she is. "We were close. And she was so strong. It took such a long time coping with the fact she lost to a fucking _flu._ Tried to give my blood so that Bruce could find an antidote, but it didn't work."

Silence nods thoughtfully.

"What about you ? Lost people, during the Fall?" Steve can't stop himself from asking.

For a long time, Silence doesn't say anything, but he doesn't either freeze like he usually does when the subject is touchy. He's thinking. "Not really. I didn't have anyone to miss, except one person, who I think was hanging out with me out of pity."

"Pity?"

"She knew what I went through. She helped me go through it. She respected my secrets. But I think it was because she felt too bad to abandon me. To her, I was a living reminder of bad memories."

"What makes you say that?"

"She knew me at my lowest point, when she was going through a rough patch too. We helped each other. We came through – her better than me. But I think that when she saw me, in a way, she was transported back to that period of her life when everything was fucked up."

"Did she remind you of that period of your life when everything was fucked up?"

Silence stares at the road, a blank smile on his lips. "Oh, no. She was the only thing that helped me holding up, back then. The only light of humanity in my life. It didn't last long before the darkness came back, but I kept that memory, deep inside me, in secret. When I woke up, I went to find her. She was the only one who could understand. The others would have thought I was a monster. She helped me go to psychiatrists, she soothed my nightmares and my anxieties. I owe her so much."

Steve is riddled with curiosity – who is that person, what kind of darkness did Silence wake up from – but he doesn't dare to ask. He doesn't want Silence to stop talking.

But the story is over, apparently, because he doesn't add anything.

"Was she the one who gave you the Stingray?" Steve asks.

And suddenly, light explodes in his mind, seeping in all its recesses, and he knows who Silence is talking about. He knows _what_ he's talking about, at least part of it. He stares at him, speechless, and Silence glances back at him. "She was," he whispers.

Steve lowers his head. "Will you tell me, someday? When you're ready? Do you trust me enough to do that?"

Without warning, Silence stops the car. The clouds have been gathering for the past few hours. The sun is gone. Silence looks at Steve. "I do trust you, Steve. I just don't want to hurt you."

"More than you're hurting me right by treating me like a stranger? By making me call you Silence?"

Silence lowers his eyes.

"You're scared of me," Steve says. "You're telling me you don't want to hurt me, but the truth is that you're scared of the way I'm gonna react. Aren't you?"

Silence shakes his head, unable to find his words. "I don't want to talk about it here", he says finally. "Not in the car. Not when you're mad at me."

That gets Steve to calm down instantly.

"I'm not mad. I just want to understand."

But Silence is already starting the car again. A few raindrops are beginning to fall. They don't say anything else.

As expected, they reach Los Angeles late in the afternoon. Steve was somehow hoping to find some sort of community, like in the Center, but cars are still abandoned in the middle of the streets, the shop windows are shattered, and a deathly silence hangs over the city. No life to find here.

They decide to take refuge in a bar, and shelter the pickup truck from the intensifying rain under the roof of a gas station nearby.

When they get inside the bar, the rain is pouring, and the smell of wet earth rises in the air. The skies quickly darken. The weather has been good since Steve left the Center. It had to happen eventually. But he'd rather it had happened another day. Not when things are so fragile between him and Silence. Not when he came all the way from New York to find out that Los Angeles is completely dead.

They draw on Steve's food reserves and eat without a word, then Silence goes upstairs to check the floor, and Steve, from downstairs, through the open doors, can hear him collapse on a bed and let out a huge sigh. He gets up and follows him. The rain is beating down on the roof and splattering the still intact windows, and Steve suddenly wants to hold Silence in his arms, just like this morning.

When he stops on the doorway, Silence casts him a weary look. Steve takes off his shoes, crosses the room without making a sound, and climbs in the bed to lie next to him, in the same position as before, head on his right shoulder this time, nose in his neck, legs intertwined.

"Why didn't you tell me when you first saw me, in Gallup?" He asks quietly. Under his cheek, he feels Silence's shoulder rising when he sighs, and he adds, "I don't want to call you Silence anymore. I don't want your silence. I want your voice, your words, your story. I wanna know what happened to you. Please tell me, Buck."

Bucky runs his right hand through Steve's hair, gently. "Bucky's been dead for too long", he murmurs. "I liked Silence. Another identity than the one I've been given."

"What identity? Who gave it to you?"

Bucky doesn't answer.

"I want to know, Buck", Steve insists. "I want to understand how you can suddenly reappear in my life, completely by accident, when I've been convinced for decades that you died falling from that train. You owe me an explanation."

Bucky strokes Steve's temple. "I didn't die, that day. I was found by Zola's goons."

Steve straightens up, horrified. "Zola?"

"Don't get angry so quickly, Steve." Bucky lets out a raspy laugh. "We're just getting started. Since you want to know, listen to me all the way."

Steve shuts up. Bucky's words are underlined by the pouring rain, and he holds him tighter. The pleasant warmth he felt during the whole trip has all but vanished.

"Zola made me stronger, in Azzano. I knew you knew, but I didn't want to talk about it, so you didn't ever ask. When I fell, before you and Gabe Jones captured him, he had enough time to instruct his men to come and get me. Then you guys released him, and he came back for me. I lost my arm during the fall. They replaced it with another, a metal arm. Very advanced stuff. A weapon."

Steve's breath catches. In his chest, his heart stops beating.

"They made me forget who I was. Again, and again, and again, and again. Every time a memory came back, it was taken from me. They constantly wiped my mind, until I was no more than a machine to manipulate, in which they could ingrain new ideas. The Winter Soldier. That was my codename."

Steve shudders. He's heard that name before, the Winter Soldier. When SHIELD still existed, a long time ago, they tried to catch him. Never succeeded.

"For over eighty years, I did all their dirty work. When they didn't need me, they put me in cryo-freeze."

This time, Steve straightens up to look at him. Bucky's face is completely blank, but Steve feels horror seeping in his entire body, to the very tip of his fingers, to the extremities of his hair.

"They sent me to train Natalia and the girls from Department X for combat. Didn't last long, only a few months, but they didn't erased that memory from me, since I got it legitimately.

Bucky puts his hand on Steve's cheek, gently, as if he could ease the violence of his words with soft gestures. "I got away once, in 2025. Don't know what happened, but I was starting to resist to the programming and there was a security breach. Lost my left arm again, but I managed to escape. Spent a year outside, trying to figure out who I was, and I found Natalia. She took me to Stark's place, and he built me another arm. She gave me her Stingray so I could escape. It wasn't enough. Few months later, HYDRA captured me again.

"They let me keep Stark's arm. It was excellent technology, designed to last. But once again, I was forced to use it against innocent people. Then everything Fell, and the guys from HYDRA were the first ones to die. I'm still wondering if they're not the ones who accidentally released the virus upon mankind. It's entirely possible; they were doing biological experiments in secret. I survived, I left. People were dying all around me. I went to find Natalia. She was already dying. She asked that I go look for you. Told me that you shouldn’t be alone."

Bucky's hand slips from Steve's cheek, as if drained of its strength.

"Everybody died around me, and I got scared, that's true. You were right. I was scared of what you would say, I didn't want you to reject me, I didn't you want to bear my burden. And I barely remembered you, Steve, after all these years they spent wiping my mind. I went to exhibitions, to the Smithsonian. Got my memories back, one by one, over the years, but I didn't want to find you. I didn't want you to see me as a monster. I had planned to live alone for the rest of my life, but I can't die." His voice shatters on the last word, and Steve takes his hands in his and squeezes with all his strength. Just like Bucky, his eyes are leaking.

"Years go on, and I'm still young and in good health. Time won't kill me before a long while, there's no one here to murder me, and I'm too much of a coward to commit suicide", Bucky says, voice broken with sobs.

"Bucky…"

Steve's heart is bleeding. He knows why Silence didn't want to talk about it, now. Nobody deserves to live that, especially not Bucky, his Bucky.

"And then, in a hotel in a god-forsaken place, you appeared, _you,_ of all the survivors in this country, in _that_ hotel, of all the four millions of square miles in the United States, and I heard Natalia cackle in my head and tell me it was fate. That if I didn't want to come to you, you were the one that would come to me."

Through his tears, Steve smiles and nods, and Bucky goes on. "You didn't recognize me. No, I know you _did_ ", he says when Steve starts protesting, "but you thought I was dead, and it was easier for me to make you believe it wasn’t me. I wanted a new identity. Silence, Steve's traveling companion. I don't know how to be Bucky anymore, Steve. I can't be your Bucky."

This time, Steve can't stop himself from hugging him, and Bucky hugs him back.

"Even if you feel like you can't be the same Bucky as before, you still can be _my_ Bucky. It doesn't matter, Buck. I ain't the same Steve Rogers either. People change."

"But I killed people, Steve", Bucky says in a broken voice. "I've been killing people for a hundred years. I'm a murderer. Why the hell would you want me to stay with you?"

"I'm a murderer too, Buck. I killed people, just as you did."

"The ones I killed were innocent!"

"I've killed guilty people, and I've killed innocent people too. I had a big fight with Tony because of that. We were causing so much collateral damage he wanted us to be put in check by the UN. I killed people who didn't do anything wrong, Bucky, so I'm the last person who can judge you. And anyway, does it really matter, now that we're the only people left on Earth? They would have died anyway. When I can't sleep at night, I tell myself that. Now, they're at peace, the ones we've killed, with their families. It may be a heartless thing to say, but where they are now, they don't care one bit."

Bucky glances at him, and Steve clearly sees he's not convinced, but the despair in his eyes has slightly diminished.

"So… It doesn't matter to you? Knowing about that?"

"It does, Bucky. It makes me angry as hell to know what they've been doing to you for a century. It drives me crazy. If they weren't all already dead, I'd kill them myself to the last. And it makes me angry at myself for not going to look for you in that ravine. For not throwing myself after you to cushion your fall. For not finding the Winter Soldier. It's all my fault."

Bucky straightens on the bed, hands still in Steve's. "Stop that, Stevie. You know it's not true. You know there was nothing we could do. It was entirely beyond our control."

Steve stares at him, and he remembers what Silence told him, in the car. "I was the first one, right? The one you were telling me about in the car. The friend you lost contact with."

"Course you were", Bucky whispers, eyes downcast.

 _I should have known,_ Steve thinks. _Death doesn't mean anything. I should have known it was Bucky as soon as I saw him. I should have believed._

Sighing, he opens Bucky's right palm and kisses it softly. His skin is still so hot.

"What are we gonna do now?" Bucky whispers. "Still want me to come with you?"

Steve stares at him, almost shocked. "You really think I'd let you go if I wasn't forced to? If you don't want to stay with me, Bucky… I'll respect your decision. But please, _please_ … stay. I don't want to lose you again."

Bucky puts his head on his shoulder, and Steve strokes his neck gently. "I wanna stay with you", Bucky says, voice muffled by Steve's tee-shirt. "I thought you wouldn't want me anymore once you knew who I was. Thought you'd be mad at me that I wasn't there when you woke up."

Steve slides a finger under his chin, and obliges him to raise his head towards him. Bucky's eyelashes are wet, even darker than usual.

"Listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you, Bucky, and then, we won't talk about it again: I don't blame you. First of all, I have no reason to, because you didn't do anything wrong, and the one I'm angry with is only myself. But even if I _had_  a real good reason to be mad at you, I'd tell you that I forgive you and that it's forgotten. And I know you're going to say that I'm the stupid one for blaming myself, because I couldn't have done anything to save you. And even though you'd probably be right, that still wouldn't quench my guilt. So here's what I'm suggesting: we start back from scratch. We mutually forgive ourselves for the mistakes we didn't make. We forget we weren't there for each other, and we promise that, as of right now, we'll _always_ be there. Clean slate. Back to the beginning."

For a moment, Bucky just stares at him, then an incredulous and awestruck smile appears on his lips. "Back to the beginning", he repeats. "And we stay together."

"And we stay together."

"All right, Steve."

Suddenly, Bucky's forehead is against his, and Steve feels like he just got back a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is his heart, that's been missing for a very, very long time.

"Tomorrow," Bucky whispers, "we'll look for people in the city. Right? It's a big city. Maybe we'll find someone." His hot breath falls directly on Steve's lips.

"Okay", Steve answers quietly.

"And then, instead of going back to the Center, we could go up north. San Francisco. Seattle. Try to find survivors there. Go all around the country, just the two of us. Would you like that?"

"I'd like that, Buck."

"Great."

Bucky kisses him, very softly, and Steve's not surprised. It's the logical continuation of their relationship, the result of their mutual attraction. Bucky's lips taste exactly like Steve always imagined they would – they taste like home. And Steve realizes it's true; wherever he'll go, north, south, east or west, as long as Bucky will be with him, he'll always feel like he's right where he's supposed to be.

That night, it doesn't stop raining, and Steve listens to the pitter-patter of the water against the windows, head on Bucky's shoulder.

In silence.

 

**FIN**

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading till the end, guys!  
> Kudos are love and comments are life.  
> See you around!


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